Trivia / Fire Emblem

• Cash-Cow Franchise: In Japan the series has been this since Mystery of the Emblem, but Invisible Advertising resulted in the series being lesser known out of Japan until Awakening debuted on the 3DS in 2012/3, with extensive advertising, thus putting the series on the road to being one of Nintendo's biggest IPs out of Japan too. 2017 was the year the dam really broke, with Shadows of Valentia, Heroes and Warriors all landing that year (SoV having the shortest mainline turnaround time to export in franchise history prior to Three Houses), with both packaged games selling very well and Heroes turning into a legitimate global phenomenon that could crack the top 5 grossing charts in America and contribute to Nintendo's bottom line so heavily that they discussed it at length in investor reports.
• Colbert Bump: Big time. Marth and Roy were included as hidden characters in Super Smash Bros. Melee, and once western fans found out about them, demand for their series to be exported to the west increased greatly. Today, it's a moneymaker for Nintendo, and each game receives lots of promotion upon release, cementing its place in Nintendo history alongside their other franchises.
• Dummied Out: There's evidence that Soldiers were once intended to be playable in Mystery of the Emblem. This also applies to Genealogy of the Holy War, where they don't appear at all in the final game.
• Fan Translation: Very common within the series, because many entries in the series never left Japan.
• God Does Not Own This World: Series creator Shouzou Kaga would leave Intelligent Systems shortly after Thracia 776 and hasn't been involved since.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • All of the Western games pre-Awakening are now out of print. As a result, they tend to be sold for exorbitant prices, locking out players who started with the new generation of games unless they use emulators or have a friend willing to loan them a copy. This is somewhat alleviated by the availability of Fire Emblems Blazing Blade, The Sacred Stones, and Shadow Dragon on the Wii U Virtual Console, but the wallets of those without Wii Us or who would rather play the games on their original systems are in for a rough time.
  • Gaiden, Thracia 776, and all Fire Emblem games released between The Sacred Stones and Shadows of Valentia have all fallen into this status since March 27th, 2023, as none of them were confirmed to receive any kind of port for the Nintendo Switch.
  • The Mystery of the Emblem OVAs never saw a rerelease since both the LaserDisc and VHS releases first hit Japanese store shelves, and the same applies with its English dub, which only had a VHS release and nothing else. Because both KSS and Studio Fantasia no longer exist, it is unlikely that the OVAs will ever see a rerelease, physical or digital. Thankfully, both the original and English dub in their entirety survives online.
  • Similiar to Super Mario 3D All-Stars, the English version of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light was only made available until March 31st, 2021. After that date, the game was delisted and was made no longer available to purchase.
• The Merch: Since its inception, Fire Emblem has produced a lot of merchandise, the majority of which are Japan-only. This most often includes guide and artbooks for various games, figurines (such as amiibo and the Fire Emblem Figure line of 1/7th scale statuettes), tin badges, and even a few plush toys. Since the late 2010's, the franchise also expanded into keychains, acrylic stands, fashion accessories, and even food products.
• Network to the Rescue: Due to being stuck in licensing limbo after the production companies involved went bust, the Mystery of the Emblem OVAs were archived by Tokyo Lab, but when that company planned to destroy all existing masters of various anime that have similar licensing problems and cease operations in November 2023, it and all other anime were saved by the TOHO Archive.
• Newbie Boom: The first international newbie boom started with Super Smash Bros. Melee, due the surprising popularity of Marth and Roy in the game. Now, the hype and general acclaim of Fire Emblem: Awakening has generated a Newbie Boom of its own seeing as how it saved the series from dying and became the best-selling game in the series. Fire Emblem Heroes has caused this yet again, as a free-to-play mobile game with a large cast that spans the entire series. And then Fire Emblem: Three Houses did this once again, this time due to being the first mainline installment in twelve years to be released on a home console, rather than a dedicated handheld.
• No Export for You: The games released between 1992 and 2002, New Mystery of the Emblem (the remake of the third game, Mystery of Emblem), and most of the manga adaptations have never left Japan. As mentioned in Colbert Bump above, Marth and Roy's inclusion in Super Smash Bros. Melee helped convince Nintendo to release the games in North America starting with Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade (under the title of Fire Emblem) in 2003.
• Real-Life Relative: Two of the series' most iconic characters, Marth and Edelgard von Hresvelg, are voiced in English by Yuri Lowenthal and Tara Platt respectively, who are husband and wife.
• Reclusive Artist: Not much is known about Shouzou Kaga outside of his work on the series. He directed and designed every game through Thracia 776, then abruptly splintered off from Intelligent Systems to start up his own studio and create both TearRing Saga (whose close similarities to Fire Emblem would prompt a lawsuit from Nintendo) and Berwick Saga and later create Vestaria Saga more than a decade after that.
• Referenced by...:
  • Not the intended use (Zantetsuken Reverse): At the end of Chapter 9, Dracula's thoughts on various video games is noted:
    he got annoyed with Fire Emblem for portraying unrealistic tactics
  • While Mario is visiting Petalburg in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, he meets a Toad who's an avid gamer. This Toad will tell Mario he's been playing Fire Emblem the first time he’s spoken to. This reference is only made in the English version; in all other languages, the Toad says he’s been playing Super Mario Bros.
  • My Impossible Soulmate: Chiaki imagines herself as Marth with a white flag in her hand in "Good Morning".
• Sequel First: An extremely egregious offender. No games in the series made it to the West until The Blazing Blade, which was not only the 7th installment, but a prequel to the 6th game. Nintendo also lopped the The Blazing Blade subtitle off to call it just Fire Emblem - understandable from a marketing standpoint, but in the long-term, it's created a tangled heap of confusion for new players over which game is what. Essentially, it's the saga of the "missing" Final Fantasy sequels all over again, but with more games missing, and Nintendo thus far not interested in clearing it up for westerners. However, Fire Emblem Heroes has finally given it its proper subtitle for Western countries, that being "The Blazing Blade", likely to try and begin fixing the confusion mentioned above.
• What Could Have Been:
  • There was going to be a title for the for the Nintendo 64 — called Fire Emblem: Maiden of Darkness — which would have been the third game to take place on Archanea. Due to a number of factors, it was heavily reworked and eventually became the Game Boy Advance game Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade.
  • Another Wii game after Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn was planned, and even entered development; it was going to be a Real-Time Strategy with some exploration elements. It was scrapped due to RTS not meshing well with Fire Emblem's design philosophy.
  • Fire Emblem would've gotten another expo-styled event in 2020 after the success of its first one in the previous year, but unfortunately due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic at the time, it was cancelled. This led to Nintendo uploading the full recording of the concert from the 2019 expo for a limited time, just to make up for its cancellation.